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What is Good Itemization?

Lhynn

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Aug 28, 2013
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Fuck that shit, if the enemy is using a wand of fireball i want it when im done with them. If he has a ring of free action, i want it. If she has unwashed panties, i want them.

Fuck that gamey retarded shit, give me what they own. Fuck economy, give me cool shit to buy and it wont be a problem, stuff on magical item manuals is hella expensive, make consumables plentiful, cheap and useful, so i actually feel inclined to buy them and use them (its really fun to do so). Finances shouldnt be an issue if you are murdering armies and taking their shit, it feels out of place not having two cooper pieces to rub together after kicking the ass of the orc chieftain and his 17 sons.

Money problems should exist only in early game, after you have killed more people than Ebola economy should be far down your list of concerns.

Good itemization is about having useful shit with well defined characteristics and game changing effects. Im not interested in that ring of 4% poison resist, 7% lighting resist. Give me a ring that outright cuts in half fire damage, or that negates piercing damage completely and we are talking. Cursed items are only good when they are extremely rare and fairly powerful, dont waste my time with weak ass cursed items that only slightly slap my wrist, give me stuff that makes me feel like i just lost a right arm for using it and that puts me at a serious disadvantage on a fairly common situation, but that in exchange allows me to destroy some encounters, make the choice tough.

Dont worry about balance, worry about challenge, make me sweat, make me be thankful for having those items, best itemization in the world is still crap if you dont get to actually put it to good use.

Dont get too carried away with class specific items, a couple are fine, but most items should have a universal use.
The best kind of class specific benefits are the ones that outright modify class skills, that can open a whole world of possibilities.

Dont give items too many properties, just one or a few strong ones. Try not to repeat properties too much, and never repeat a combination of properties.
 

octavius

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Another example of good itemization is The Aethra Chronicles, which had an excellent synergy between skills and items that are missing in virtually all older (pre 1998 at least) CRPGs. Also, the items stacked.
 

Dorateen

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Might&Magic 2 is a prime example: items can be up to +64 (better than +24 is very rare, though), better than +6 (or was i 8?) are alignment restricted, and items can have all kinds of suffixes. A bit like the Diablo games, but for a whole party. Fighting powerful enemies and grabbing their booty afterwards never gets tired in MM2

The itemization was fantastic in Might & Magic II. I also enjoyed the system used Isles of Terra and World of Xeen, with the material based properties, progressing from lower quality to emerald, diamond and obsidian. Tracking items found in those games was so interesting, I made pages of notes identifying what everything does.
 

Burning Bridges

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Less is more. People always go overboard with quantity. If you are a game designer simply think people can not use more than one item at a time, so just give them one that is memorable instead of hundreds that are crap.
 
Self-Ejected

IncendiaryDevice

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Less is more.
No it isnt, less is less.
That philosophy has already costed us thousands of systems and features in games, leads to lazy and simple shit.

More can sometimes mean less:

gmpUa4t.png


Especially when you can't even walk without picking up junk.

But I get what you're saying, though there are no hard easy catchphrases, you need a full sentence or two to express the requirement properly.
 

DraQ

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I see the term "itemization" bandied about on this forum, but I don't really have a formal understanding of it. It seems there are disagreements about what games have good itemization on this forum, so I want to extract some clarity from a discussion of it.

Let me then pose two very basic questions:
  1. What exactly is itemization?
  2. What constitutes good itemization?
I would prefer answers that go beyond merely listing examples, as there are many threads which already list examples. Also, if there are any resources discussing the topic in detail, posting links would be appreciated.
  1. Itemization is what, how and when items can be found or otherwise obtained.
  2. Good itemization, like any other feature, is when its inclusion makes the game more interesting as opposed to more tedious/boring. There seem to be some good replies in this thread already, so let me read them first. :M
 

felipepepe

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As Sid Meyer said, "a game is a series of interesting choices". Good itemization offers that choice.

There is no fun in replacing your 200 DPS weapon for a 205 DPS weapon, or replacing a 12% fire resist armor for a 15% ice resist one.

The Baldur's Gate games are still the high-mark of the genre for me n this regard. BG2 is amazing. Then there's unforgettable items - a sword that talks, an armor made of human flesh (tied to a cool quest), a flail with elemental heads, the motherfucking Holy Avenger, the armor you craft from dragon scales, the legendary Crom Faeyr you reforge...

And they all have interesting abilities. Your your warrior will effectively use 3-4 weapons, because not even the Holy Avenger or Crom Fayer are "always best" items - sometimes you're better off with Lilarcor's "Immune to charm and confusion", using Soul Reaver to decrease the enemy's THAC0, or even using the Cursed Berserking Sword +3 to get immunity from Maze when fighting drow mages or Kangaxx.

Yeah, sometimes using a fucking cursed weapon is better than using the motherfucking Holy Avenger - that's good itemization.

Sadly, it's almost non-existent nowadays. Most RPGs out there don't even push players towards carrying more than one weapon - "just equip the highest DPS bro".
 

Ninjerk

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I first need to finish Fallout, and to finish Fallout I still need to finish The Witcher. And to finish The Witcher, I need to get some motivation I haven't been able to find.

There's only one Fallout game, don't believe their lies.

  1. Itemization is what, how and when items can be found or otherwise obtained.
  2. Good itemization, like any other feature, is when its inclusion makes the game more interesting as opposed to more tedious/boring. There seem to be some good replies in this thread already, so let me read them first. :M

:bro:

A DraQ response is mandatory with these sorts of questions.
 

agris

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As Sid Meyer said, "a game is a series of interesting choices". Good itemization offers that choice.

There is no fun in replacing your 200 DPS weapon for a 205 DPS weapon, or replacing a 12% fire resist armor for a 15% ice resist one.

The Baldur's Gate games are still the high-mark of the genre for me n this regard. BG2 is amazing. Then there's unforgettable items - a sword that talks, an armor made of human flesh (tied to a cool quest), a flail with elemental heads, the motherfucking Holy Avenger, the armor you craft from dragon scales, the legendary Crom Faeyr you reforge...

And they all have interesting abilities. Your your warrior will effectively use 3-4 weapons, because not even the Holy Avenger or Crom Fayer are "always best" items - sometimes you're better off with Lilarcor's "Immune to charm and confusion", using Soul Reaver to decrease the enemy's THAC0, or even using the Cursed Berserking Sword +3 to get immunity from Maze when fighting drow mages or Kangaxx.

Yeah, sometimes using a fucking cursed weapon is better than using the motherfucking Holy Avenger - that's good itemization.

Sadly, it's almost non-existent nowadays. Most RPGs out there don't even push players towards carrying more than one weapon - "just equip the highest DPS bro".
Couldn't agree more.

I don't know what you think about the SR R/DF/HK games, but imagine if they had had BG2 levels of itemization (+spells)? It's a fun (if not sad) mental exercise that drives home the fact that non-linear itemization can really add to a game.
 

Ninjerk

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As Sid Meyer said, "a game is a series of interesting choices". Good itemization offers that choice.

There is no fun in replacing your 200 DPS weapon for a 205 DPS weapon, or replacing a 12% fire resist armor for a 15% ice resist one.

The Baldur's Gate games are still the high-mark of the genre for me n this regard. BG2 is amazing. Then there's unforgettable items - a sword that talks, an armor made of human flesh (tied to a cool quest), a flail with elemental heads, the motherfucking Holy Avenger, the armor you craft from dragon scales, the legendary Crom Faeyr you reforge...

And they all have interesting abilities. Your your warrior will effectively use 3-4 weapons, because not even the Holy Avenger or Crom Fayer are "always best" items - sometimes you're better off with Lilarcor's "Immune to charm and confusion", using Soul Reaver to decrease the enemy's THAC0, or even using the Cursed Berserking Sword +3 to get immunity from Maze when fighting drow mages or Kangaxx.

Yeah, sometimes using a fucking cursed weapon is better than using the motherfucking Holy Avenger - that's good itemization.

Sadly, it's almost non-existent nowadays. Most RPGs out there don't even push players towards carrying more than one weapon - "just equip the highest DPS bro".
Couldn't agree more.

I don't know what you think about the SR R/DF/HK games, but imagine if they had had BG2 levels of itemization (+spells)? It's a fun (if not sad) mental exercise that drives home the fact that non-linear itemization can really add to a game.
It looks like they started taking an interest in that kind of thinking by the time HK rolls around (e.g. the thing that bounces grenades away from your character), but alas I suppose we'll never know where they could have gone.
 

agris

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Couldn't agree more.

I don't know what you think about the SR R/DF/HK games, but imagine if they had had BG2 levels of itemization (+spells)? It's a fun (if not sad) mental exercise that drives home the fact that non-linear itemization can really add to a game.
It looks like they started taking an interest in that kind of thinking by the time HK rolls around (e.g. the thing that bounces grenades away from your character), but alas I suppose we'll never know where they could have gone.
Yea, even DF had a few found weapons that weren't linear upgrades - like the grenade launcher, stun gun and that other weird home-made pistol.

If only we had gotten a SR game with full party customization: items, weapons and progression, combined with nonlinear itemization. I think there was a lack of vision at HBS.
 

laclongquan

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1. Silent Storm engine (for S2, S2 Sentinel, and Hammer & Sickles). Items are classified into: pistol, rifle, heavy machine gun, medical items, engineer items... The way can be loosely called as "classified according to skill using that type of items". You can use the loot screen to pick up visible items according to type.

2. Fallout New Vegas system (maybe Fallout 3, but I havent played that game I dont know enough to say).

3. UFO Afterlight and Aftershock. This is a simplified system of the above, but get complicated due to the add on alien and factions items. Sometimes you just use an inferior alien weapons because you got a big supply of its ammo, and not enough of the advanced human-produced weapons.
 
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Alkarl

Learned
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Oct 9, 2016
Messages
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I wont consider an rpg to have good itemization until it will let me take off my pants and strangle the nearest npc with them. There is this apparently this exercise that Google puts new devs through, they give them an item and have them list 20 things that item could be used for in a minutes time to see how creative they are.

Fuck that shit, if the enemy is using a wand of fireball i want it when im done with them. If he has a ring of free action, i want it. If she has unwashed panties, i want them.

I agree with this notion. The dead should drop exactly what they are wearing, it's up to the designer and the devs to balance the game around this concept. Granted, the way the goldbox games handled this was very archaic (and rightly so, given their era). Nothing is more annoying than having to navigate giant piles of crap you don't want looking for what you do. I think Ultima 6 handled this the worst, having to sort whole piles of enemy and chest loot just to get at the one item at the bottom.

Give pcs limited inventory, methods of circumventing that restriction, and balance the economy and gameplay accordingly. Give players more interesting things to spend their resources on to encourage players to scavenge. Give players other ways of earning items/currency to finance their endeavors to simultaneously discourage scavenging. Time vs Effort systems, etc.

Not to mention, rare drops and rng is just a waste of anybodies time. 1/256? Fuck that shit.
 
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Norfleet

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To expand a bit on my previous message, I wish more games would take the more "gamey" approach of MM2, than the more "realistic" approach of the Gold Box and many other games where the enemies only drop what they are carrying in battle. It's so much more exciting to find randomized (based on type of monster) treasure than 20 suits of Leather Armour, 20 Short Sword and 20 Shields. Especially when the treasure caches you find are fixed.
On the flipside, not being able to take things you know the enemy is using and would survive their death is STUPID, especially when you need to resort to ridiculous convolutions to acquire those very same items that could otherwise be acquired simply by taking them from their cold, dead hands.

This is a great point. The Gold Box approach also completely wrecks any semblance of economy in the game. I distinctly remember not picking up platinum coins because they just weren't worth it anymore. In the rare instance that I wanted to buy something from a shop, I'd hand over a half-dozen +2 weapons, and then ignore the shopkeeper when he tried to give me my 20,000 platinum in change.
Game economies are terrible because games are rarely designed around any sense of economy. In order to challenge players, superior numbers of enemies equipped with increasingly powerful and therefore VALUABLE gear are typically fielded, which, of course, in a sensible looting system, results in the player being showered in gallons of valuable loot.

This is actually an example of POOR itemization: That high-level items are so superior that equipping enemies with low-value items would make them even more trivial than they already are. The low-cost items thus lack any clear reason to exist and all enemies must shower you in high-level loot as a result. It's a world where random bandits need suits of +9001 armor and weapons to even pose a threat to the player, and these armaments are highly valuable. As opposed to the real world, where people in shiny armor worth a king's ransom are not immune to harm from a bunch of guys wearing ratty scrap leather and wielding poop-smeared pointy sticks, none of which are worth anything.
 

Norfleet

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If she has unwashed panties, i want them.
This MAY be going a bit too far. Believe me, the movie trope where you kill a guy and take his clothes for disguise purposes is not necessarily so great in real life. People tend to piss and shit themselves when they die. Wearing someone's piss-filled shoes and pissy, shit-filled pants is not a good disguise.
 

Ashenai

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This MAY be going a bit too far. Believe me, the movie trope where you kill a guy and take his clothes for disguise purposes is not necessarily so great in real life. People tend to piss and shit themselves when they die. Wearing someone's piss-filled shoes and pissy, shit-filled pants is not a good disguise.

We need an "insufficiently Japanese" rating for posts.
 

Alkarl

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If she has unwashed panties, i want them.
This MAY be going a bit too far. Believe me, the movie trope where you kill a guy and take his clothes for disguise purposes is not necessarily so great in real life. People tend to piss and shit themselves when they die. Wearing someone's piss-filled shoes and pissy, shit-filled pants is not a good disguise.

It's better than freezing to death! Slap them panties on your head and now you have "Scented Ear-Muffs of Defecation +2" 8% bonus against frostbite, -40% to nerve and -100% Charisma. Cursed, of course. Haunted, to be precise. (;
 

octavius

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To expand a bit on my previous message, I wish more games would take the more "gamey" approach of MM2, than the more "realistic" approach of the Gold Box and many other games where the enemies only drop what they are carrying in battle. It's so much more exciting to find randomized (based on type of monster) treasure than 20 suits of Leather Armour, 20 Short Sword and 20 Shields. Especially when the treasure caches you find are fixed.
On the flipside, not being able to take things you know the enemy is using and would survive their death is STUPID, especially when you need to resort to ridiculous convolutions to acquire those very same items that could otherwise be acquired simply by taking them from their cold, dead hands.

That's a good point.
I actually like both approaches, but I miss the "gamey" approach in newer games. But I guess that's a general problem (for me, at least) with newer games; too much emphasis on story, character, romances and such things for which I could just as well read a book or watch a movie, and less emphasis on the actual gamey stuff like puzzles, logistics and tactics.
 

gaussgunner

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  1. What exactly is itemization?
  2. What constitutes good itemization?

So there are two opposing philosophies of itemization,
(A) Item fever: Tons of random items (classic roguelikes, Diablo, Divinity, Borderlands, everything these days)
(B) Standard items: every item of a given kind is identical (Pillars of Eternity, JA2, lots of old rpgs)

I hate item fever, it's 99% boring minor variations, but standard items are 100% boring once you acquire the best available. I think a game needs a sprinkling random awesome shit for balance. You should be able to loot it from enemies - if you can defeat them while they're using it in combat. Sometimes you'll get lucky if they don't have the stats to use it effectively. I've only seen that in a few games (maybe Spiderweb games?). Adds a nice twist to combat.. "damn, I'm getting my ass kicked, but I'm not gonna flee or reload 'cause I want that badass sword!!!"
 

Ninjerk

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This MAY be going a bit too far. Believe me, the movie trope where you kill a guy and take his clothes for disguise purposes is not necessarily so great in real life. People tend to piss and shit themselves when they die. Wearing someone's piss-filled shoes and pissy, shit-filled pants is not a good disguise.

We need an "insufficiently Japanese" rating for posts.
Norfleet's always good for an overthought post.
 

Roqua

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I think the itemization of Underrail was done exceptionally well, while also being kind of shitty by how OP crafting is.
The herpaderap excel sheet fucking about with parts of assault rifles gotta the worst example of crafting I remember doing. Though I usually never user crafting in gaymes as its a moronic garbage mechanic.

I don't really understand your spreadsheet analogy. The crafting was pretty simple and straightforward. The biggest hassle was checking vendors for parts since it was very time consuming and boring.
 

V_K

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This is actually an example of POOR itemization: That high-level items are so superior that equipping enemies with low-value items would make them even more trivial than they already are. The low-cost items thus lack any clear reason to exist and all enemies must shower you in high-level loot as a result. It's a world where random bandits need suits of +9001 armor and weapons to even pose a threat to the player, and these armaments are highly valuable. As opposed to the real world, where people in shiny armor worth a king's ransom are not immune to harm from a bunch of guys wearing ratty scrap leather and wielding poop-smeared pointy sticks, none of which are worth anything.
In real world you also wouldn't be able to carry ten suits of plate mail in your pockets, and there would be a high probability that a random enemy's armor just doesn't fit you. Not to mention shopkeepers having unlimited funds and buying random junk from a random stranger.
 

gaussgunner

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In real world you also wouldn't be able to carry ten suits of plate mail in your pockets, and there would be a high probability that a random enemy's armor just doesn't fit you. Not to mention shopkeepers having unlimited funds and buying random junk from a random stranger.

Lazy game design. If a mechanic is repetitive and uninteresting and unfun, why have it in a game? If enemies' stuff isn't worth using, I don't even want to see it. Just their good stuff. If they don't have anything good they're probably low-level trash who shouldn't be in the game either.
 

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